Gangs have had their the run of the Twin Cities at least since the retreat of law enforcement in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Carjackings have sprung up and spread like a virulent cancer. Homicides have reached record levels in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.
A crew from FOX 9 was working on the story of the robbery of a woman on Monday in the parking lot of an upscale Lunds & Byerlys grocery store on Park Center Boulevard in St. Louis Park. St Louis Park is the Minneapolis suburb that was home once upon a time to Tom Friedman, Al Franken, the Coen Brothers, Norman Ornstein, Prince manager Owen Husney, and others. The robbery of a 73-year-old woman in a grocery store parking lot has been a dog-bites-man event for a long time. I can’t imagine how the FOX 9 crew intended to turn it into a story.
As it turned out, however, FOX 9 photojournalist Vanshay Murdock happened on a carjacking as he was filming in the grocery store parking lot. Let me pause here to salute Vanshay. He did not stand idly by. He did his best to interrupt the crimes underway. His Twitter feed is here. I have taken the video below from it.
Not surprisingly, authorities believe the perpetrators are responsible for a Twin Cities crime wave of their own. For them, times are good.
Here is another carjacking story from the Lunds & Byerlys in Edina later yesterday afternoon. Edina is the suburb just down the road from St. Louis Park. Three were injured. Two Good Samaritans tried to help.
This is how it goes in the Twin Cities. The FOX 9 story is posted here. The caption on the video reads: “A FOX 9 news crew at a Lunds & Byerlys store in St. Louis Park to cover a previous robbery helped intervene in an attempted carjacking in the store parking lot on Thursday. The attackers carrying some type of weapon, attacked a driver in a black Mercedes. Our crew yelled and honked a horn to get the crew to run away.”
While reporting on one crime.. our Fox 9 crews witnesses another in broad DAYLIGHT. Thank goodness for @VanshayM, quick thinking, and car horns. https://t.co/4Cv5pQutOr
— Leah Beno (@LeahBenoFox9) December 10, 2021
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